1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to devices for the distribution of electrical power and data to a plurality of disparate devices, and particularly to a power and data hub having improved heat dissipation and that saves energy.
2. Description of the Related Art
Blade servers were developed as stripped down server computers having a modular design optimized to minimize physical space and energy usage. The design objective was to get away from the standard rack-mount server which generally could only hold one server.
A blade enclosure is a chassis that can house multiple thin, modular electronic circuit boards, commonly known as server blades. Moreover, the blade enclosure has resources that provide such services as power, cooling, networking, and a variety of interconnects and management options. Together, blades and the blade enclosure form the blade system.
During operation, electrical and mechanical components produce heat, which a system must displace to ensure the proper functioning of its components. Most blade enclosures, like most computing systems, remove heat by using fans.
A frequently underestimated problem when designing high performance computer systems involves the conflict between the amount of heat a system generates and the ability of its fans to remove the heat. The blade's shared power and cooling means that it does not generate as much heat as traditional servers. Newer blade enclosure designs feature high-speed, adjustable fans and control logic that tune the cooling to the system's requirements, or even liquid cooling systems. This however, adds to the complexity and expense of the system.
The blade enclosure provides one or more network buses to which the blade will connect, and either presents these ports individually in a single location (versus one in each computer chassis), or aggregates them into fewer ports, reducing the cost of connecting the individual devices. Available ports may be present in the chassis itself, or in networking blades.
Since blade enclosures provide a standard method for delivering basic services to computer devices, other types of devices can also utilize blade enclosures. Blades providing switching, routing, storage, SAN and fiber channel access can fit into slots in the enclosure to provide these services to all members of the enclosure. While multimedia matrix switches are available on the market, it would be desirable to provide such a switch in the form of a blade enclosure. Moreover it would be desirable to inexpensively solve the aforementioned cooling problem encountered by many devices that use a blade design.
Thus, a power and data hub solving the aforementioned problems is desired.